Omar has gathered some excellent data that points to interesting conclusions for the European tech scene. The most telling point is that Europe is a collection of tech clusters rather than one EU-wide tech scene.

This highlights why thinking on a country by country basis is not the best way to approach the market despite so much of the market commentary being framed in this way.

A more useful way to think is on a city by city basis. This points to London as the leading hub, closely followed by Berlin, Stockholm and Paris. These are the cities where the big global acquirers focus when they are looking for their next big acquisition in Europe.

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The first thing to understand about the European tech scene is that there is no European tech scene. The “European” scene is a collection of startup hubs that have sprung up in the capitals of European countries and that are more or less isolated — most have very limited interaction with other startup hubs.
So while Europe might be a single market, it’s definitely not a single tech scene. That fact makes it difficult to feel the pulse of the European tech. But if you take a close look, you’ll quickly notice that there is interesting stuff happening in Europe – to the point that we’re spotting young EUnicorns, the European answer to Silicon Valley’s unicorns!